EntreLeadership - #297: You're the Boss of You with Seth Godin

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

When it comes to growing your career, marketing guru and best-selling author Seth Godin insists you have much more leverage than you think. Sure, it’s easy to blame a toxic environment, an unreasonable boss, or even not being in charge for your lack of advancement or personal development. But in reality, Seth explains, all of those things are just excuses. Tune in for his advice on how to overcome the obstacles you think are standing between you and your desired future. We’ll also share a lesson from Dave on why not making decisions—even the controversial ones—could cost you everything. entreleadership.com/podcast Buy Seth's book: This Is Marketing Learn more about Seth's altMBA workshop Seth's blog posts: A Sprint and The World's Worst Boss Theodore Roosevelt's speech: The Man in the Arena Free tool from EntreLeadership: How to Make Decisions Office Automation Guide from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The authority is insufficient to get extraordinary results from people. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what we've got coming up for you. Seth Godin is with us again, and how do you just get?

enough of Seth God. The answer is you don't. And so good news, fresh content in a conversation coming from Seth. Then we're going to give you some of Dave Ramsey teaching from our entree leadership stage, specifically on decision making and dealing with criticism. And then I'm going to share with you just an excerpt of one of the greatest speeches of all time that will honestly warm your heart if you are in a situation where you just feel like you're going hard and nobody seems to notice what you're doing or you feel. feel like you're beat down, getting a lot of criticism, and you feel like you're doing the best you can, and you're not seeing the results, this will encourage your heart. All that coming up.

All right, folks, let's get to our conversation with Seth Godin. One little note for the conversation. You'll hear him talk about his Alt MBA. I want to make sure you know what that is. That is his four-week online workshop. Great, great content that is doing really great. Here is our conversation with Seth Godin. Well, Seth, good to have you with us again. We're going to talk about a variety of topics today. And I want to start off with something that I've been talking to people a good bit on my radio show about. They'll call in and they'll say, hey, Ken, I like my work, but I've got a really bad leader, or I've got a toxic environment around me. What should I do? You have some thoughts on this, this idea of change and pain and dealing with bad leadership.

There are different kinds of toxic environments. And there are different kinds of toxic environments. And there are There's one that's intolerable, and that is management that pushes you to compromise your morals that wants you to put your name on work or activity that you are not proud of. And when faced with that, you have to fix it or you have to leave, and it's not negotiable. You don't get to say, oh yeah, I did that work and people died or people were deceived or things ended badly, but it's not my fault the boss told me to. And fortunately, there's less and less of that in our lives as it's easier to spread the word about toxic organizations.

Most of the time, what we're really dealing with are one of two things. Either somebody says, I want to do great work, but my boss won't let me. I want to innovate, but my boss won't let me. I want to treat customers differently, but my boss won't let me. And what's actually happening there is you are saying to the boss, I want to do something innovative. And if it works, I'll get the credit. But if it doesn't work, because I asked you first, you'll get the blame.

Well, no boss goes for that deal. So the opportunity is to understand that if you are willing to take responsibility without asking for authority, and if you are willing to give away credit, you will be amazed at how much you're allowed to do. Because if you're given away credit, a line will form out the door of people who will say, do it again, let me take the credit this time,

and you'll get to do it again. And if you're not waiting for authority because you don't need to boss people around, but you're willing to take responsibility, well, many organizations hand out responsibility like candy to anyone who wants to take it. So that's the first piece. And then the second piece, what I found, which I learned from our friend Zig Ziglar, is that one of the biggest contributors to a bad corporate culture is you.

And that you can fix it one person at a time. That if you are managing sideways, managing up, managing down with relentless positivity, you will discover that people will reciprocate. And that it will take a while, not one day. but if you start contributing to the culture, you may discover that the culture starts contributing back. Boy, that's good. We have a lot of people, Seth, that listen to this program, and one of their, we just did a listener survey.

And one of the top things they wanted to hear more about was just career advancement. I think that's something that a lot of people long for, obviously, to be their best, to do good work, that matters to them deeply. If you were going to give some advice to somebody who's early on in their career. They've got a lot of ambition, a lot of desire and enthusiasm,

but that's early on in the journey for them. And they fight what I think all young people do, and then certainly anybody that is ambitious to do work that matters, you know, they're fighting a little bit of impatience. They'd like to happen right away. What would you say to them about the idea of paying their dues, an old phrase? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, this comes up in the ALTA MBA all the time, and I think there's a fork in the road. And on one side is the fork of organized school, the placement office, and industrialism. And this fork is fit in, fit in all the way. That the way to go forward is to fit in all the way. And if you fit in all the way long enough, you'll get picked, and you'll work your way up, and you'll work your way up, and one day you'll be the CEO of General Electric. And that model worked for parents and grandparents and many generations.

before us, because as the pyramid of industrialism builds, we need compliant workers who fit in, who do what they're told. The problem is there's pressure on all of those organizations to race to the bottom, that if they can write down a job description, they can find someone cheaper than you to do it, that the idea of Fiverr and Craigslist and various job boards is, if you can figure out how to get to the lowest common denominator, you can hire cheap. And that book, the E-Mith Revisited, is all about that. It says, break every job down into a piece that can be done by a mediocre employee. The alternative is to race to the top, not to fit in, but to stand out, to be the one and only. That if you are the one and only, if you're the only person we can find to do what we need done, of course we'll give you more

responsibility. Of course we'll give you more money because we have no choice. So the paying your dues is two different things. One, you might be able to pay your dues by fitting in and fitting in and sticking it out. Or you might be able to pay your dues by doing dangerous work, scary work, risky work, work that makes you feel like a fraud until you come out on the other side and people go, well, of course, because she's been hot stuff all along. And I spent a lot of time with 22, 24-year-olds now. My kids have peers. And I see this.

All of them are on one path or the other. And where the real pain lies is if you're on the fitting in path, but you think you deserve to be on the standing out path because it doesn't happen all by itself. Boy, that's true. Let's talk about for a moment. personal growth as it relates to moving professionally, moving where you want to be. I think there is a natural human condition to want the success to come very, very quickly.

And we see stories that many times appear as though it was a microwave situation. And yet we know most of the time, it takes time, takes a lot of time to get where you want to go or to become who you want to be. With what you're doing with this Alt MBA, you're getting a lot of time. chance to speak into bright men and women's lives on an almost daily basis with this. What do you say to that tension between I've got to persist, keep going, but also be patient? Well, I love the microwave idea. Microwave versus sourdough, right? Because the sourdough could take a long time to grow, but it's worth it. You know, the Alt MBA is 30 days.

It's intensive. No one spends less than an hour a day, every day. Sometimes it's five hours a day. And the reason is we believe in stretching. And you're used to stretching when you're in 10th grade. You stretched when you had a really cram for something when you were a sophomore in college. But often, when we get into the real world and it comes to our development, we stop stretching. We sort of bake in place. And one of the biggest outputs of the Alt MBA is people say, I never knew I could get so much done. And once you've seen it, then you're sort of obligated to do it again.

And my belief is it's not what you know. Because with the Internet, you can look up what you don't know. There isn't a shortage of information ever again. It's what do you want to know? What do you want to be responsible for? What do you want to explore? And too often we think, I've got so much on my plate, I have no time left for exploring. However, if you turn off Facebook, turn off the television, and skip a couple of meetings where they won't miss you, suddenly you have four free hours a day, six free hours a day.

What are you going to do with that? Because it's only by using that time to stretch yourself in another direction that you're going to get out of the jam you're in. And it's not going to happen gradually. You're going to make a significant commitment to choosing to be seen by others as a different sort of person. And that's hard, but it's better than the alternative. Yeah, that reminds me, you actually wrote on your blog recently about sprinting, you know, this idea that life is usually compared to a marathon, but learning how to sprint and pushing yourself and operate at a high level is something that most of us rarely find out and discover. How fast can I sprint? How long can I sprint for?

How does that apply to the leader, maybe somebody who's running a business? Well, you know, one of my favorite posts I wrote is called the world's worst boss. And obviously it's about you. You are the boss of you. But if you talk to any of your employees the way you talk to yourself, if you did development for any of your employees the way you do development for yourself, you'd be out of a job. That what we do when we talk to ourselves, when we challenge ourselves, is completely insufficient.

And once you learn to manage yourself, it becomes a lot of. way easier to manage other people because you've already been through it. You've already experienced what it's like to explore both high standards and a human being who will see you where you are and encourage you not chop you down. And too often managers think that their job is all about authority. You know, the authority comes with being a manager. But the difference between a great manager and a lousy one is not the amount of authority they have. It's the amount of enrollment they have. How much attention and compliance and energy have they earned from the people over whom they have authority? Because authority is insufficient to get extraordinary results from

people. But now that's a good statement. Go deeper with that. Why is that true? Because what you can say to people is we have a stopwatch. We have a stop. here, and I'm going to time how long it takes you to put eight pairs of shoes into these boxes. And if you can't do it by this amount, you're fired. And that's the way factories were run for 100 years. But what you can't say is, here's a piece of paper, design a pattern that no one's ever designed before. Because I can't measure it with a stopwatch.

That the work that really matters is the work of emotional labor. It's how will you work when there is no manual? How will you work when no one is watching? What will you do when a customer is in pain? I can't measure that with the stopwatch. So I can't threaten to fire you if you're not fast enough. Instead, what I have to do is make sure you're on the journey that I'm on and seeking the feeling that we're feeling.

Because if you want what I want and you see what I see, you're going to commit to bringing emotional labor to the table the way we need it brought. But if the only tool I've got is compliance and authority and you're fired, you'll never dig in deep to your soul and bring the best part of yourself forward. Wow, that's good. You know, so many times, Seth, the guests on this program, many times as many times I've interviewed you, it feels like we ask a lot of questions on how to get to the top.

How do we succeed on some level? be personally and professionally in leadership, innovation, launching something, what have you. But I want to ask you something. I don't believe I've ever asked you before. And that is, what advice, what caution, what encouragement do you give to the leader who has worked hard, done what is necessary, and now they're winning? Let's say they're in the lead, if you will. And yet it's not just a guarantee that they're going to stay in the lead. So to the person, to the leader who's winning, who's in the lead, what do you say to them? I guess it's all about compared to what.

Compared to what is a question we need to ask ourselves way more than we do. There are billionaires out there who feel like they're not doing enough, winning enough, because there are other people who have $5 billion. Well, that's a ridiculous thing to compare yourself to. That there is a difference between the activities and the games that we play where we can easily keep score. Oh, I want my handicap to be three strokes lower. Well, that's probably a good way to approach golf, but it's not a good way to approach life.

In life, what we do when we're doing good work is we are changing other people for the better, changing people we care about. And so if you are succeeding by whatever measure you used to have, I would say back to you, are you changing people as much as you could? Are you digging as deep as you could to create lasting impact? will you be missed if you don't show up tomorrow? Because those things are infinite. They're not about I'm doing better than Bob.

They are, I'm doing better, period. All right, let's talk about something that I've always loved your insight on, and that is making decisions. That's essentially, if it's not influence number one, maybe decision making is number one. influence decision-making top two things that leaders have to do, in my opinion. Your thoughts on decision-making, a healthy leader, how are they making decisions? Okay, so I start with two things. The first one is this. You don't dig ditches for a living. You don't mix beakers of chemicals for a living. What you do for a living is you make decisions. If someone says to you, if your friend says, what do you do for a living? You say, I make decisions. That's your job. That's right.

So don't pretend that's not what you do. Don't shy away from it. Don't be a wimp about it. Make decisions. It's your job. Okay. Second piece. This is so misunderstood.

The most important thing about making decisions is to ignore sunk costs. What does that mean? It means that something that happened a week ago or a month ago or a year ago, it happened. but it doesn't impact your decision because you can't undo what happened. So, for example, if you have a law degree and it costs you a fortune and you worked really hard, but five years into it, it's clear that there's no career prospects and you hate it, you should stop being a lawyer. And the way to do this math is really simple.

Try to imagine that that thing that you're carrying around, whatever it is, is a good, gift from your past self. You don't have to take the gift if you don't want it. So the guy across the street from me had some masonry work done. And the mason was there doing a good job. And it was called quality masonry. And he had a big sign. And he spelled the word masonry wrong on the sign. So I waited until he was done because I didn't want to have a guy with rocks across the street who was maddeny. And when he was finished. finishing up the job. He said, it looks like great work. Thanks for doing that. He said, you're welcome. I said, I got a question, do you know that the word masonry is spelled wrong on your

sign? Like, that doesn't really help people feel good about your quality. And he said, oh, yeah, I know, but I got 20 these signs. That was it. I got 20 of them. These signs are a gift from the old him. That someone a year ago sent him these signs. Does he want them? If the signs had just derived today as a gift free from the past him, he would say, no, send them back. I don't want this. Masonry is spelled wrong. And that's what we have to do to make good decisions, is look at the stuff we got from the old us and decide if we want it. Because if you don't want it, send it back. Wow, that frees the mind, doesn't it? I hope so. I want to follow up on that. So when we start looking at sunk costs like that, do you find that? Do you find that?

even if we can identify that and go, no, I don't want it, but if it's got some human decisions attached to it, you know, so now that's a sunk cost, I don't want it, therefore I'm going to get rid of it, and it's got some human beings attached to it. Does that also create another hurdle in making what we call tough decisions because it involves? Maybe some very nice people who were great in the first 10 years of the company, but they're not equipped and they're not prepared to go with us forward into the next decade. Well, so there's some complicated things implied in your questions. Let me try to tear it apart a little bit.

You know, the Nintendo company used to make playing cards. And there came a day when they said, playing cards are a gift from our founder many years ago. We don't want that gift anymore. We're going to become a multi-billion-dollar maker of computer games instead, right? Now, when we deal with humans, we begin with this. We made a promise to those people. What was the promise? How can we keep the promise in a way that permits us to still grow?

How can we avoid making new promises that keep us from growing? Number two, I think it's a mistake to write off human beings as not capable or not skilled. I think we need to add the word yet, that these people aren't capable of doing this yet. Now, we can go to those people and say, that thing you used to do for us, we need to. it. Now we need something else done. We would like to develop you into the kind of person that can do that. And we promise you that if you make that happen, you can still be part of what we're doing. But if they can't, it's a new promise and you can honor that promise. So I think big corporations in particular make this mistake of thinking that the people who work for them are frozen in time.

They are what they are. And then they move them around like numbers on a spread. spreadsheet. And I don't think that's the way you were acting when you hired them. And I don't think that's the way you should act when you move away from them. Well, he is Seth Godin and a long-time friend of the organization. We love what he has to say, what he writes. Before we let you go, Seth, I know you do have a new book. I would love for you to tell our audience what it's about. We touched on it very briefly. You mentioned it earlier. But give us the summary and how they can go get it. The book is called This is Marketing. It's out now. It launched with a big boom. I was thrilled that started as a bestseller. That's a nice feeling. Congratulations. Thank you. I wrote it

because I wanted to put a line on the ground. I wanted to say, look, marketing used to be scammie and selfish and narcissistic and ad-based and interruption. And now marketing is something else. Marketing is the act of making things better by making better things. It's our chance to say to the culture, people like us do things like this. And all you've got to do, if you want to see the lessons, is watch Dave and his organization. That Dave is a master marketer, not because he runs ads, but because he models a change he wants to make in the world. And in this book, I've outlined how each of us has that opportunity. to show up to say here, I made this, and to do it for other people and with them,

not by doing it to them or at them. And best place for folks to get it other than we know it's where, is it where most books are sold with you? I never know with your publishing. It's only at places where finer books are sold. But you can also read a summary and the reviews and a video presentation at seps.blog slash t-im, which stands for this is marketing. Oh, I love that. All right, good stuff. Very good. Well, Seth, as always, it's a joy to talk with you, and I appreciate your time. We're much better for it. Oh, you're great. It's always a pleasure. Thank you, Ken.

All right, folks, let's talk about our Entree Leadership resource for you this episode. It is the decision-making checklist. You heard Seth and I talking through the importance of making decisions. Well, this tool will help you. Some of the steps that you're going to be able to use in the checklist include setting a deadline, taking the appropriate amount of time. that you need to make the decision, putting together multiple options so that you're not just paralyzed by making one decision. And of course, research. There's so much more in this great resource, but that is just a snapshot of how it can practically help you in making big decisions, medium-sized decisions, and even the small decisions that sometimes can turn a company around. To get it, text the word decision to 3-3-44-4. That's decision. Text that word to 3344. That's 33444. Or you can get the link in the episode's show notes. All right, it's always fun when our founder, Dave Ramsey, the icon himself, gets to be a part of the program. It's hard to beat his

talks from the stage. He is, after all, the original entree leader. And specifically today, we're going to give you some of his content from the stage talking about making decisions and then handling criticism, which comes with being a leader. Here's Dave Ramsey from the entree leadership stage. An entree leader, as an entree leader, passivity is not an option. You must learn to make decisions to succeed. Now, certain personality styles are more prone to make decisions quicker,

others are prone to make decisions slower. That's fine. Make a decision. Passivity, waiting on things to happen on your behalf, waiting on other things to move in the marketplace are not an option. One definition of being an entrepreneur, of being an entree leader is the willingness, the ability training your will, training your mind to impose your will on the marketplace. You've got to be anything but passive. Your business,

your ideas, and your team are paralyzed if you are. An indecisive leader paralyzes the whole movement, the crusade, the organization, everything is paralyzed when you can't make a decision. Indecision is really caused at the end of the day by one thing. Fear. And fear takes two forms. False evidence appearing real, which is just the ability for fear to paralyze you for no particular reason. Or fear says, I'm going to be wise enough to gather more information. I'm going to pause and wait on the traffic to go by before I walk into the street.

That's a good kind of fear. and so you've got good fear that's causing you to not be rash, and you've got bad fear that is the fear that just paralyzes. But at the end of the day, the only thing that will cause you to freeze on decision-making is fear. Same with me. The Bible says, and a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. When I start thinking about indecisive leaders, and I start thinking about a double-minded man, immediately I call this squirrel doctrine. You ever seen a squirrel run out in the street? Blum-blum.

That's what happens. If you don't make decisions, you get your butt run over. You've got to be willing to make a call. Get to the right, get to the left, just get somewhere. Get to one side of the road or the other. Make a decision. It could be wrong, but it's much more devastating to your organization for you to be perceived as someone who can't and won't make the call.

Paralyzed. It demoralizes everything else you've done. It steals the speed and the pressure. the crusade out of marketing. It devastates the culture of your organization. It is amazingly damaging for a leader that won't make decisions. Criticism is going to come with a territory. I'm afraid of what somebody's going to say. Just get ready. Somebody's not going to like it. Congratulations if you've made an enemy. Congratulations if someone disagrees with you. All that means is you did something. And in our culture,

the internet gives every 14-year-old in his grandmother's basement an opinion, everybody's got an opinion about everything. And they're like armpits. Everybody's got one. Most of them stink. Just because you can get on the internet doesn't mean your opinion is valid. Just because you can write a one-star review on some guy's book, doesn't mean you have any idea what's going on.

And you have really got to put these things in perspective. And expect that the more you do, the more you're going to be criticized. And the more you're going to be misunderstood, and you're not going to have the opportunity to clear it up with every one of them. Have you seen the level of hate that is thrown at Bill Gates? Does he deserve it all? No way he deserves it all. Does he deserve some of it? Possibly, I don't know.

I don't know Bill Gates. I've never met him. There are a lot of people that have opinions about some of his business moves one way or another. they may or may not understand all the facts. My experience with situations like that is, the closer I get to situations that people are criticizing, the more I realize the critics absolutely don't know what the flip they're talking about. They don't know the people.

They don't know their character. They don't know who they are. They don't know their mentality. They don't know what they're talking about. But as soon as you get ready to do anything, to stand for anything, to move anything, just bother. God forbid, just go be successful. That pisses people off. No matter what you've done, you must have done something wrong to get there in some people's minds. And so they've got the ability to do that. You've got to get used to that. I'm not bitter about it. I'm just amazed at the

way our culture, on the one hand, says, hey, go be successful. And it's almost as if so we can throw rocks at you. Now, I can't tell you how many times that I know somebody, for instance, and community that is a country music star. And I know them personally, not because I'm a big deal. I've just got to meet like the guys last night and the guys that they write for last night. And I'm having dinner with somebody. And then I hear somewhere in some conversation, or do you hear so and so in the way that guy action? He's really arrogant. I'm going, dude, he's nowhere near as arrogant as you are. He would never say that about you. He's one of the easiest going, nice, easy going guys you could.

ever run into. Well, you ought to hear that guy's full of himself. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? I'm amazed at the opinions that people have of people they have never met. You know, it's almost as if that if you're Taylor Swift, you immediately have to be, have things thrown at you. If you're Brad Paisley, you have to have things thrown at you. You know, it just blows my mind. And the sad thing about people like that, me, I bring it on, because I kind of invite it. I get that, okay? I'm going to. I'm going to, good with that. I mean, I'm an old, crusty old guy. I get it. It doesn't bother me a bit. But you take those people, they're artists. They're not used to having the snot beat out of them like that. And the level of hate that is leveled at people simply because they're successful.

You know, I saw them in so-and-so and they didn't leave a tip or whatever. Really? You watch the entire transaction happen. You were standing over their shoulder the whole time. What you are is full of crap and you're a gossip. I've had this conversation a few years. I've had this conversation a times, and so people don't criticize people like that in front of me much anymore. Because I just, it's a, you know, it's ridiculous. Expect criticism. Go sell 500 houses in a year. The other realtors are saying, well, you just don't. They don't really give good service their customers. What? How could they freaking sell 500 houses if they didn't give good service their customers? You're an idiot. You sold five houses last year. And the year before that, you sold Pepper Chef.

Shut up. You know? Really. Seriously. This is your entire. This is your entire. entire analysis of someone else's business model, look in from the outside and throw rocks. Dumb is what that is. But that's our culture, isn't it? And so be ready. If you do nothing but just simply go win, that's enough. So go win and go win, big. Get criticized a lot.

The fruits are worth it. Winning is worth it. It's worth people not understanding. It's worth it. You get to do and see and be things you never thought you'd go see and do and be. make the decision to go win, regardless of what the critics might say. There's never been a statue erected to a critic. They just don't do it.

Hope you enjoyed, Dave. Well, folks, I told you at the top of the program that I was going to share with you an excerpt from probably one of the most quoted or, let's say, cited speech excerpts in the history of the world. That's right. Teddy Roosevelt. And it has been called The Man in the Arena Talk. Now, here's the deal.

It is just a small portion of a much bigger speech, but it has become famous. If you type in Google, Man in the Arena, this excerpt is going to show up. It has encouraged my heart more times than you can imagine. And it sits the picture of Teddy Roosevelt, probably one of the most famous portraits of Teddy Roosevelt, has been turned into a painting by a great artist by the name of Steve Penley. and it sits in my Ken Coleman Show studio. And across the top of the picture, it says it is not the critic that counts. And so I'm going to read this.

And when I read this, you know, I know that you folks listen to us on lawnmowers and snow plows and on, you know, step climbers and stair climbers and all over the place. You listen to us in the car. You listen to us at the office. If you're somebody who's going through a tough time right now, you feel beat down and you feel like questioning. or you've already allowed your head and heart to begin to question your effort and what you're doing. I want you to listen into this. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who airs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Folks, I have read that over and over and over and over again in times when I felt like no one was paying attention, in times when I felt like I was maybe unfairly criticized, in times when I felt lost, in times when I felt alone. because at some point all of us who strive to do something that matters and you, entree leaders, are those men and women, when you are putting yourself out there and striving to do something that matters deeply to you, there will be times where it is very lonely, where the failure completely surround you. And you start to wonder, is this worth it?

Is everything that I've put into this, the preparation, the long nights, the risks, the personal pain, the professional pain, the financial loss, is it worth it? And the answer is, it is. Because while we all fail, ultimately, we fail forward when we choose to learn by picking ourselves up off the arena floor, if you will, standing back up and deciding to fight again one more day. Having no idea that maybe that next day that you decide to get it, up and get into the office and keep fighting is the day where the breakthrough happens. We're all of the preparation. We're all of the investment.

We're all of the failure. And we're all of the moments where you rise again. All come together for one moment. And you're where you're supposed to be. And you've stayed in the right place and then the right time happens. So if you are the man or the woman in the arena, realize that you are in fact where you're supposed to be. And this is what comes with the territory.

When you put yourself in the arena, it's a fight. It's like gladiators of old. They put themselves in there and it was either live or die. And you're in a fight that matters. We're standing alongside of you. We're cheering from the stands, if you will. And we appreciate you. So stay in it.

It's absolutely worth it. All right, folks. we're going to switch gears. We love to share stories from time to time from you find folks because we do this program for you. We do Entree Leadership for you. Got a great Facebook post that I just wanted to mention real quick. This came in from Jay Owen. He's an All Access member and owner of design extensions. It's a web design business in Florida. And he posted something on the All Access Facebook page. And I just wanted to share it with you all because I think Jay represents many of you. He posted a picture of an Entree Leadership program from an event seven years ago.

and he said, this still sits on my desk today. He said, seven years ago, when I went to this event, we had a couple of team members and had done barely 400,000 in sales. This year, we will be close to 2 million, and now have 15 team members. Next year, we will celebrate 20 years of consistent growth as a company. And he went on to say some nice things about the team and the all-access coaches, but I just wanted to share that because there's a guy that seven years ago decided to go to an event. So he made this initial investment of buying the ticket and then travel and then his time. So you look at all that and you go, okay, there's a certain amount of dollars, but a small investment in the grand scheme of things. And you look at the extreme growth they've had in seven years and a bright future, 20 years, consistent growth.

That's a very mature and healthy company. And that is why we do it. So congratulations to Jay. We appreciate the nice note, Jay, but we're sending it back at you because you are. why we do what we do. Great stuff there. All right, our friends at Infusionsoft have a great guide for you. This episode is the Office Automation Guide. If you need to free your mind up to make decisions by automating simple tasks, this is for you. Entrepreneurs spend 68% of their time managing daily task. Oh my gosh, that is a nightmare. So automation, automation, automation. You've got to look into it

at the very least, folks. You've got to at least kick the tires with Infusuf. That's what they help entrepreneurs and small business people do, which is automate things so that they're not spending 68% of their time managing daily tasks. So check out this tool, so much good stuff there. It's absolutely free. Go to infusionsoft.com slash office dash automation. That's infusionsoft.com slash office dash automation. Or you can get the link in the episode 297. The link is there in the show notes. Well, folks, that's going to do it. On behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so very much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions.

Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman Show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes or go to Ken Coleman Show.com.